Housework

The House of Representatives not only outlaws filibusters, but usually gets its major work done on schedule. Last week, as the Senate went into its tenth day of debate on its Atomic Energy Commission bill, Speaker Joseph W. Martin brought the House bill to the floor under a rule limiting discussion to four hours, plus a short time for each proposed amendment. But the fight over public v. private power worked up more steam than even Joe Martin had bargained for.

By recess time at 3:14 the next morning, the House had gone through its longest session in years, and Joe Martin's slim Republican majority, assisted by a band of conservative Democrats, had beaten back the advocates of public power. By a vote of 172 to 115, the House threw out a rider aimed at canceling President Eisenhower's order for the AEC to buy electricity from private power companies. Then it approved, 161 to 118, a provision that was the precise opposite of language tacked onto the bill in the Senate: where the Senate wanted the Atomic Energy Commission to get into the commercial electricity business, the House would keep the AEC from building commercial nuclear reactors to be used for generating electric power.

Having picked over the AEC bill's 104 pages in one long day, the House was ready to vote the bill's final passage. But the hour being late, it recessed for a weekend's rest before the roll was called.

Busy all week long, the House also:

P:Passed three anti-subversive bills that would 1) make bail-jumping* a felony punishable by five years in prison and a $5,000 fine; 2) strip convicted Communists of citizenship; 3) require subversive organizations to register with the Attorney General all their printing equipment, down to Mimeograph machines.

P:Received from its Post Office and Civil Service Committee a bill to deny civil service pensions to Government workers who duck behind the Fifth Amendment, or who are convicted of perjury, bribery, graft, treason, or any other felony. The proposal arose from the case of Alger Hiss, who will get a federal pension at age 62 unless the bill is enacted.

P:Unanimously approved a 5% boost in payments to disabled veterans, and up to 25% more in payments to dependents of veterans who have died from service-incurred injuries.

P:Received from its Commerce Committee a bill making segregation in interstate travel a crime on the part of railroads, bus lines or airlines, punishable by fines up to $1,000. The bill is not expected to be brought to a vote this session.

*Most notorious Communist bail-jumper to date: Gerhart Eisler, top Cominform agent in the U.S. until 1949, when he forfeited his $23,500 bond and got out of New York on the Polish ship Batory. Fugitive Eisler became East Germany's propaganda chief, and then was placed in charge of preventing escapes across the border.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.